


Jump

by catty_the_spy



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, F/M, Gen, Mentions of Forced Prostitution, Non-Consensual Drug Use, artistic license – drug use, ill advised secret keeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8622193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: Peeta says "How high?"





	

It starts with pain.

The place where flesh meets metal is a source of constant pain, and no amount of make up and charisma can hide it.

Portia frowns at him before his first post-Games interview. She disappears for a moment, while the prep team fusses over him.

He bounces his cane between his knees.

When Portia returns, she presses a small black tablet into his hand.

“It’s icidrep,” she explains, also handing him a glass of milk. “Try to take it with something basic or it might upset your stomach.”

She squeezes his shoulder.

Portia always looks after him.

Peeta takes the pill.

  


Icidrep is wonderful. He takes it throughout his stay in the Capitol. It doesn’t dull all of the pain, but it keeps it out of his eyes. His limp is less extreme.

Portia gives him a large bottle before he leaves for Twelve.

“Look after yourself, sweetie, and don’t take it all at once.”

Peeta hugs her. “I’ll be careful. Thank you.”

  


He doesn’t try anything “recreationally” because of Portia. 

  


He’s surrounded by his prep team, in the Capitol. He watches them flutter around him, trying to be nice, trying to keep up with their conversation.

He frowns and tilts his head back. “What are you doing?”

Anaxas rolls his eyes. “Your face, silly. Hold still.”

“No, I mean what are you on? Your eyes…”

Anaxas’ eyes are glazed and dark. He shares a sly smile with Calliope over Peeta’s head.

“Cinnamon,” he whispers, and the two of them giggle like they’re naughty children.

Peeta frowns. “Cinnamon? As in cinnamon rolls?”

They giggle again, and Anaxas tosses his head. “No, cinnamon as in Cinnamon Swirl. You really don’t know?”

“No wonder Twelve is so dreary,” Calliope says. “They don’t have anything fun.”

Anaxas reaches into his pockets and pulls out a tiny bag. What he produces is the right color for cinnamon, but shaped like a sugar cube.

“Don’t chew it,” Anaxas warns.

“You have to let it melt in your mouth,” Calliope adds. She’s still tweezing his eyebrows. “Slowly.”

They smile and giggle while he considers the cube Anaxas gives him.

Peeta’s tired. He’s tired, and it was all a lie, and he can’t sleep, and he has to go and smile at the people who watched him kill –

He pops the cube into his mouth.

It tastes like cinnamon, with a medicinal undertone.

By the time Anaxas and Calliope are finished with him, Peeta is floating. He doesn’t want to attend a party with a girl who doesn’t love him and people who just want to take advantage of him, but it doesn’t matter so much. He could smile at his mother right now. 

Portia sighs when she sees him. “When did you last take the icidrep?”

Peeta shrugs. “I dunno. This morning? Last night?”

“Good enough,” Portia says. She pulls him to his feet. “You’ll be more coherent by the time you get downstairs. Come on.”

He needs help getting dressed. His fingers are slow and clumsy. Everything about him is slow and clumsy. It’s normal, isn’t it? Usually it bothers him. It shouldn’t. It’s not a big deal.

“Don’t talk until you’re…until you get to the party, okay? Peeta.” Portia holds his chin in her hands. “Do you understand? Don’t talk to Effie, or Haymitch, or Katniss until you get to the party. Okay?”

Peeta smiles at her. He can’t help it. Portia is always nice. “I won’t. Don’t worry, okay?”

Portia shakes her head.

  


The Capitol streams by in a swirl of color. He itches to douse his hands in paint.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Haymitch says.

Peeta doesn’t answer him.

He wonders if Portia’s more worried about them smelling the drug on his breath or him saying something to give away.

Haymitch can probably tell by looking at him.

Peeta glances at Katniss, who is glaring at her hands. Portia couldn’t have been worried about her noticing.

Haymitch is still eyeing him.

  


The party is a break from the Victory Tour. They have an interview in the morning – a hastily scheduled detour from the normal progression of the tour. In the morning, Peeta will propose to the love of his life, and Katniss will pretend to be thrilled, and hopefully the president will find it acceptable and both of their families will be safe.

Until then, Peeta shakes hands with a line of the Capitol’s finest. Well, not the finest. The Capitol’s moderately-fine, the kind of people who weren’t scheduled for better parties before this one dropped into their laps. All of them are star struck.

“It was so beautiful,” one of them slurs. “I’ve never seen anything more romantic. When the two of you kissed for the first time…”

“Thank you,” Peeta says. He doesn’t have to fake a smile. The tears contrast horribly with the clownish smile painted on the woman’s face. “Personally, I think Katniss makes any moment beautiful.”

A round of titters surrounds him. Somehow, he’s lost Katniss and ended up alone with her admirers.

“I loved it when Katniss blew up those supplies. She’s just so smart.”

“When she treated Rue like her own sister – oh I could hardly stand it.”

“She’s so talented. I had to buy my niece a toy bow; all she wanted was to be just like Katniss.”

Peeta’s team isn’t important enough to attend these types of parties; Peeta is only important in relation to Katniss. So he's surprised when someone presses a drink into his hand, and he barely takes a sip before it’s replaced with something else.

Cinna.

“We were wondering where you’d disappeared to,” Cinna says. The drink he’s given Peeta is significantly less alcoholic than the one that preceded it.

“We were just talking about Katniss,” Peeta says, gesturing to the cloud of rhinestones and feathers that make up the crowd.

“What a coincidence. Katniss was looking for you.”

Katniss looks lost. She’s terrible at parties like this. Haymitch is talking over her.

Peeta acquires yet another drink between leaving Cinna and joining Katniss. He kisses her cheek, and it’s easy to miss his glass being plucked from his hand.

“You need to slow down, friend. Don’t want to mess up that pretty dress.”

Katniss glances between Haymitch and Peeta with a small frown. “Has Peeta been drinking?”

Peeta rolls his eyes. “I barely got to taste my last one.”

He gets another look at Katniss’ dress. “I’d never mess this up. You look too good in it.”

This earns him coos and “aww”s from the crowd.

Katniss latches on to his arm and doesn’t let go until they’re on their way back to their suite.

“Are you really drunk?” she asks.

“No,” Peeta says.

Katniss looks to Haymitch for conformation.

“He isn’t drunk,” Haymitch says.

Peeta laughs, because Haymitch is trying to send a message Katniss won’t receive. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m just in a good mood.”

  


When Peeta unpacks in Victors Village, he finds more Cinnamon in his bag. Anaxas must’ve slipped it in without Portia catching him. Peeta debates hiding it, flushing it, taking it all at once and ending the farce he’s in.

He discounts the last one. He can’t leave Katniss. And he can’t put her family in that kind of danger.

Peeta sits a while, listening to the sound of his empty house.

He pops one in his mouth and puts the rest on his bedside table.

Sweet spicy cinnamon melts on his tongue.

  


Peeta doesn’t use it every day. Anaxas gave him enough to last ‘til the reaping if he’s careful, and Peeta is very careful. 

He says hello to Prim every morning. He goes to the bakery a few times, but they don’t want him there. His mother hisses to him that she doesn’t need his charity, and his father simply pretends he’s not there.

He bakes more than he needs.

He makes meat pies, Sheppard’s Pie, casseroles, angel food cakes, quiches. One day, with the lingering taste of Cinnamon on his tongue, he makes the most elaborate meal he can. It’s enough to feed almost everyone he knows.

Most of it ends up in Haymith’s refrigerator. The meat pies end up in the seam, tucked into the hands and pockets of small children too young to worry about pride.

He gives food to Prim and Mrs. Everdeen while Katniss is out. They invite him for dinner but he turns them down.

He brings Haymitch a whole cheesecake.

“Sit,” Haymitch says, pointing at a clear patch of counter.

Peeta sits.

“I thought it was a one off in the Capitol,” Haymitch says, leaning back in his chair, “but I’ve seen it a few times too many since we got back.”

Peeta considers playing dumb, but it’s too much effort in the end. “I don’t do it all the time.”

“What is it and who gave it to you?”

“I got it from my prep team; it’s fine.”

Haymitch humphs, but he seems more at ease.

“There are a lot of drugs that aren’t safe to mix with alcohol. Do one or the other. I’d prefer not to spin a hospital stay.”

Peeta nods. “Icidrep, for pain, and Cinnamon.”

“Also for pain,” Haymitch adds. He gives Peeta a onceover before handing Peeta a bottle of liquor. “I think it’s safe to assume your girl doesn’t know.”

Peeta nods. After a moment of hesitation, he goes searching for a clean glass.

  


There are a few television spots as part of wedding coverage. 

Portia checks his supply of icidrep and gives him a little more. “Don’t be shy about your cane,” she tells him. “Even around the house.”

Anaxas gives him more Cinnamon. “The rest of my stash,” he explains. “It just isn’t _in_ anymore.”

Calliope has something new for him. “Holly,” she whispers with a conspiratorial grin. “You dip and sniff.”

“What’s it like?” Peeta whispers back. Portia and Katniss and Katniss’s entire prep team are in the next room.

“It’s like a caffeine patch,” she replies. “You’re wide awake, and everything’s more fun.”

He doesn’t try it until after the interview. Calliope leaves a bag in his bathroom, with a not so subtle wink as she leaves the house.

“What was that about?” Katniss asks, washing the makeup off before she goes home.

“I dunno,” Peeta says. “Maybe she thought we were going to…y’know.”

Katniss makes a face. “They wish.”

They aren’t the only ones.

He’s glad Haymitch isn’t here. He would’ve gone snooping.

He’s a little less inviting than Katniss expects. She cuts him a confused glance as she walks out the door, probably wondering why he hasn’t invited her to stay.

He’s not in the mood for lost causes.

He puts the holly in the same drawer as the Cinnamon.

He’s up all night, painting and sketching. He drops like a stone just as the sun starts to rise and sleeps without dreams.

It might just be the best sleep of his life.

  


He visits the bakery. He makes himself do this once a week, to remind himself that he loves them, that he has a family after all.

Dango is out back, smoking. It doesn’t smell like tobacco.

“Care to share?”

Dango raises his eyebrows. “The Peeta I know is too pure for this sort of thing. I distinctly remember him whining like a pussy because he hated the smell.”

Peeta grinds his teeth and snatches it out of his brother’s hand.

Marijuana is perfectly common in District Twelve, but Peeta’s never tried it.

He probably won’t try it again. He’s had better highs without the burning lungs, and he says as much.

“Bullshit,” Dango says with a laugh.

  


Somehow he gets it into his mind to visit again the next day. It might be the Holly.

“Holy shit, man,” says Ryan. Peeta was closest to him growing up, which isn’t saying much.

“I’m in the mood for ginger bread but I don’t feel like waiting.”

“I can see why.”

Ryan counts Peeta’s money. Peeta counted it three times before he left the house, and again as he placed it on the counter. Apparently Rye doesn’t trust his counting skills.

Peeta snorts. “I can’t look that bad.”

“You look like you need sleep.”

Fair enough. “I’ll sleep tomorrow, don’t worry.”

After Peeta eats the ginger bread he sees that there’s some in his oven. He’ll give it to Haymitch tomorrow, whenever he wakes up.

The best thing about Holly is two straight nights without dreams.

  


Peeta wakes up on his floor, next to a growing pile of crumbs. He yawns. “Morning Haymitch.”

“Afternoon to you too.”

Haymitch is eating his gingerbread. Peeta frowns. “Did I buy that or bake that?”

“Maybe both; I’m sure you’ll remember eventually.”

Peeta forces himself into a sitting position. His head is fuzzy.

“Are you going to give me a lecture?”

Haymitch shrugs. “Who am I to speak against self medicating? You might want to be a bit more subtle, though; I just had a lovely conversation with Katniss.”

Peeta winces. “Sorry.”

“So what was it this time?”

Peeta looks around. “Holly. I tend to crash wherever I’m standing when I come down.” 

“Holly, huh? It’s amazing, the wonders technology can give us.”

Peeta scrubs his face. He could sleep another day, but he has to at least poke his head out the door. Katniss normally runs from him at least once a day. She’ll worry if he doesn’t show up. And he needs to clean his kitchen.

  


Katniss knocks on his door, right as he’s getting ready for bed.

“I can’t sleep,” she says – she stutters. “Can I stay?”

There’s still flour everywhere in his kitchen. He doesn’t have anything to build a fire.

Still, it’s Katniss.

“Sure. Come on in. Do you want something to drink?”

Katniss uses his bathroom.

“What’s this?” she asks, holding out the bottle of icidrep. She looks wonderful, standing there in her underwear with her hair down. The regular meals agree with her.

“It’s medicine,” Peeta tells her, trying not to stare, trying not to run her off. Again. “The leg bothers me sometimes.”

She frowns. “Like morphling?” She goes from curiosity to suspicion in a heartbeat.

“It’s not as strong. If you want, I can ask Portia what the difference is; she gave me that bottle last year.”

Once he brings up Portia, Katniss sets the bottle down. She doesn’t know Portia as well as Peeta does, but Cinna trusts her. Katniss trusts Cinna. It’s good enough.

“Do you want to borrow a shirt?” Peeta asks.

She shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable. He gets her the shirt.

  


He jolts awake, chased by the memory of teeth digging into his calf. Katniss sighs in her sleep.

It takes a while, but listening to her breathe helps him drift off again.

  


He cooks her breakfast. She sits slouched over the table while he works, treating his shirt like a jacket. 

He tries to capture the image in his mind so he can draw it later.

“What are you gonna do today?” he asks.

Katniss sighs. “I don’t know. I was thinking about going into the woods.”

“Again?” 

She glares. “If you’re going to start questioning everything I do…”

“I’m not! I was just surprised you wanted to go three days in a row. I wasn’t trying to stop you.”

“Sorry. I just…”

She stops, looking everywhere but at him. 

Peeta gives her her food and sits at the other end of the table.

They don’t talk.

  


Peeta watches the reading of the cards alone in his house. He’s restless, but all he’s drinking is tea.

Maybe he should turn on a light or something.

He runs through a list of worst case scenarios in his head. He’s been having nightmares about going back into the arena.

The results are better and worse than he thought.

“This year’s tributes will be reaped from the male and female relatives of our past victors.”

That’s what the card says.

He can hear a muffled scream, presumably from Katniss’s house.

He sits in front of his television with his cooling tea. 

Eventually he decides to go to bed. He has to shut his curtains, because the sun is starting to shine in.

  


There’s a knock on his door.

The side door, he realizes, after he jolts upright. The one that Katniss can’t see from her house.

Peeta half-hazardly attaches his leg and grabs his cane before he shuffles downstairs.

Who’d come to see him in the middle of the night?

By the time he gets downstairs his kitchen light is on.

President Snow is sitting at his kitchen table.

Peeta freezes in the hallway, trying to remember what he’d done before he went to bed. He should be sober right now.

President Snow is sitting at Peeta’s table with a small stack of paper, eating some of the cookies Peeta made the day before.

At the sink, a Seam girl who can’t be more than thirteen is washing dishes with ferocious intensity. There are armed guards and with them one of the local peacekeepers, who was trying not to yawn.

“Ah, Mr. Mellark. Do join us. I trust you’ll forgive us taking advantage of your hospitality.”

Peeta limps into the kitchen.

“This young lady is Hyacinth Wilkson,” Snow says. “She was on her way here in search of a few hours work, which we have kindly provided. Tomorrow, she will tell the other men and women of her profession that propositioning you is a waste of time. Isn’t that right, Miss Wilkson?”

Hyacinth looks like she wants to faint.

“This does present me with a bit of a problem.” Snow gestures to his stack of papers. “A lot of very important people have expressed the desire to use you the way Hyacinth would like for you to use her. All of the most prominent Victors have done it at some point or another; why not the most charming half of Panem’s first matched set? And therein lies the issue: you and Miss Everdeen are a matched set, madly in love, willing to die together rather than be parted. It would be bad for your image if you were found…entertaining in that manner. And what is bad for your image, Mister Mellark, is bad for mine.”

Snow points at a chair and Peeta sits. 

“All of the victors?” Peeta hears himself ask.

“Most, not all. Pay attention Mister Mellark. It’s about image and demand. A victor that is too young, or too old, or simply unattractive won’t be called to serve Panem with their body. Wiress from District Three used only her mind. Far too ugly to be in demand, even when she was young. There are other ways.”

Most, not all. Most. As if it was a huge distinction. As if it made anything better.

“You can’t – you can’t do this! You can’t treat us like we’re – like you own us!”

“I can. But I won’t. Not yet.” Snow gives Peeta a polite smile. “As I said, that would be bad for your image, and image is everything. I’m here to provide you an alternative.”

Snow gestures to his stack of paper, now covered in a light dusting of crumbs.

Peeta is sober. He is very sober.

“I have here a list of people who would be pleased to share narcotics with you. There are limits to what they can administer, and how. The consequences for any damage will be severe; you must be healthy enough for formal functions. If you agree, neither you nor Katniss will ever have to provide sexual favors to anyone, together or individually. If you refuse, Katniss will be called to the Capitol tomorrow for her first engagement.”

Peeta stares at the table. Snow doesn’t say that he owns him again; he doesn’t really need to.

  


The powder that President Snow gives him makes him tired and imaginative. He can hear colors.

His first client is an artist, and they paint together for hours, until their bodies and clothes and floor and ceiling are an extension of their canvas, and the room is a rainbow and they fall asleep at its end. His escort, a mousy woman who isn’t Effie, has to carry him to the waiting car.

There are no cameras. It isn’t a party. It’s an easy first gig as a reward for compliance. A _this is what it could be if you obey._

“Did the photo shoot go well?” Katniss asks when he gets back.

“Easiest thing I’ve done all year.”

“You hired a Seam girl to clean your house.”

“Yep.” Is that jealousy in her voice? “I got tired of falling whenever I tried to clean the windows.”

“Oh.”

The entire conversation is painful, but how much worse would it be if he was telling her ‘I could have saved you from prostitution, but I wanted to keep my coping mechanism to myself’? This way is better.

“I want you to help me train Prim,” Katniss says. “I don’t want her to be unprepared when….”

“It might not be her,” Peeta says. He told Prim the same when he last saw her. There are ten women in his family who are over five years old. Depending on how the gamemakers interpret it, most of the merchant class could be his family. If Prim’s name comes out of the bowl, one of them might volunteer for her – one of the ones who didn’t hate Peeta for getting them into this.

“Who else are they going to chose? Your mom? He told me to make them stop rebelling and I couldn’t.”

He touches her shoulder. She wobbles, like she wants to come closer. Then she leaves – to the woods, to Gale, maybe even to her bathtub.

Peeta lets his hand fall.

That night Katniss crawls in through his window and sleeps with her head on his chest. 

“I missed you,” she sighs, before she drifts off.

“I missed you too.”

  


The smoke makes his eyes water.

“Switch to sky view,” his client says to the long window, and the view of the city changes into a view of the stars.

Peeta lies down on the slippery floor cushions. He’s dizzy. 

“Can I see your leg?” a woman asks. She’s blinding. She might have walked out of the sky.

Peeta rolls up one of his pants legs to show her human flesh, with fine blond hairs that seem white in her light.

“Your other leg.”

“It’s not a leg, it’s a prosthetic.”

She pinches his skin with her shiny silver nails and draws blood.

  


“I can’t,” Prim says through tears, looking at the rabbit her sister holds. The knife in her hand is clean.

“You have to.” Katniss stands firm, the rabbit’s blood running down her arm. Her knuckles are so white that the animal’s snapped neck ought to turn to paste in her grip.

Prim drops the knife and folds her arms. “I can’t.”

“You cut into people all the time with Mom. How is this any different? For goodness sake Prim, it’s not even alive!”

“No,” Prim says. “You can’t make me do this. I’m a healer. I’m not going to start cutting things up just to prove a point.”

“This isn’t about proving a point; it’s about keeping you alive.”

“It’s not going to help!”

After a moment of hesitation, Peeta closes his window and goes to his paint room. They’ll work this out; he doesn’t need to hear them.

  


“What are the other Victor’s like?” Peeta asks Haymitch, while his mentor blunders through his house on the hunt for liquor.

“Fucked,” Haymitch says, “but you get used to them.”

That’s all the information Peeta gets, so he decides to watch their interviews instead. A warped picture of what’s ahead is better than none at all.

  


He brings Mrs. Everdeen two loaves of soft white bread, and she hands him goat cheese wrapped in a square of cloth.

“Peeta,” she says, hesitating the way she does when she wants to talk to Katniss.

“Peeta, I know it’s not my place….”

He adds her to the small list of people who’ve noticed. “I’m fine.”

“No you aren’t. But you should be more careful.”

He shrugs. It doesn’t matter if he’s careful, so long as he does as he’s told. Maybe she thinks he’ll turn out like Haymitch.

“I hope…I hope Haymitch looks after you, when you’re in the Capitol. I hope you talk to him about whatever is bothering you. And if you have… _other_ problems, I. I can’t say I know what it’s like, being in the Games, but I do know how it feels when you – to want things to be over.”

“I don’t – I mean, I know what would happen if.”

“Some things you can’t control.”

She gives him a thin smile and puts the bread away.

Peeta goes home.

  


Vick Hawthorne is reaped from the small pool of potential tributes. The ceremony is over too quickly for Gale to volunteer, and that’s deliberate.

 _If you want Gale so badly_ the Capitol says _you can keep him_.

The female is Aidy Wesson, a cousin on Mrs. Mellark’s side. She’s twenty; her daughter is four.

They fight while the tributes say goodbye to their families – Katniss wants to focus all their time on Vick; Peeta thinks they should split their time equally. 

“What do you want me to tell her?” he shouts, while Haymitch fills his flask from one of the crystal decanters in the bar car. “That my family doesn’t matter? ‘Sorry, Katniss doesn’t think you deserve to live?’”

“It’s my fault Vick is here! They think he’s my cousin!”

“Aidy _is_ my cousin!”

“I owe it to Gale to get him out.”

“They’re not coming out,” Haymitch says, which shuts them both up. “Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll put on a good show.”

They hide in different parts of the train, waiting for their tributes to arrive. 

Peeta counts out doses in his head and takes something for his leg. Portia sent him a new cane for the mentor’s lounge, with a compartment in the shaft where he could hide his pills. There’s something else too, a button that the note said not to touch. 

_For emergencies_ it said in Portia’s neat writing. _We’ll talk._

  


Katniss and Peeta are awkward when they talk to their tributes. Peeta’s won, but it doesn’t matter. He gets a message; he has a client to see during their fuel stop.

The Capitol woman isn’t there to drop him off. Instead, Haymitch has to drag him back to the train. If anyone saw, they’d think Peeta was helping Haymitch, who’s barely conscious himself.

Katniss doesn’t ask any questions. She’s pretending to sleep.

Peeta stands in the door way and stares at her back.

He smells like his host’s awful cologne. 

How long until she asks him? What lie will he tell?

  


Peeta doesn’t remember his next assignment. He swallows whatever his client gives him and the night disappears.

He comes to with his non-Effie escort slapping his cheeks, a small bit of tension on her non-reactive face.

“Y’kin move,” he slurs, reaching out to touch tiny frown lines that deepen as she slaps his fingers away. 

She pulls out a little tablet and leans against the car door, taps like a woodpecker tapping the sidewalk with its glass heels. Her unassuming clothes – black dress, black jacket, black wig, black shoes – seem to swallow her.

When the world stops rocking he turns his head to see the sterile walls of the training center. Cool fingers touch his wrist.

“Katniss?”

An avox shakes her head. She sticks something on his arm and pulls away.

He sleeps until noon.

“Where were you?” Katniss snaps. “When we got off the train, you disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. His tongue moves a little too slowly.

Her eyes narrow. “They went through remake and the parade without you. I had to drop them off for training by myself.”

“Why don’t you kids take a walk,” Haymitch suggests. “Wouldn’t want the tributes to hear you fighting.”

The tributes are nowhere near, but Katniss takes the hint. Sometimes she can be uncomfortably perceptive, and sometimes she – can’t. Doesn’t want to. He knows the feeling.

They leave Cinna and Portia and Haymitch and Effie to share worried looks in the suite and go up to the roof.

“What’s wrong with you?” Katniss asks. “Have you been drinking?”

“No.”

“No? That’s all you have to say? You disappear to the Capitol for ‘photos’ and when you come back you hide in your house and no one sees you for days! And no one else ever hears about these photos, you won’t tell me what they’re for. You kept going on and on about training our – about training them together, and then you just disappear! What is going on with you, and don’t tell me it’s nothing – it’s obviously not nothing!”

He tells her about Snow coming to his house, people paying for his company. 

“They’re not allowed to have sex with me. They can’t deliberately hurt me. They can’t give me morphling.”

“Oh, well at least he’s not whoring you out.”

“I’m lucky,” Peeta says, ignoring the sarcasm. “He’s made other Victors do worse.”

He watches her pace and bite her nails, while the wind obscures the sounds of the city below.

“Who else knows?”

“Haymitch. Portia and Cinna. The woman who takes me to my assignments. Maybe Effie; I’m not sure.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Snow threatened both our families? You’re not the only one that can keep secrets Katniss!”

“This concerns me too! Did you think of that? You were the upset that I didn’t tell you about my meeting with Snow; don’t tell me I can’ feel the same way.”

She walks faster. “You’ve been acting so strange, and – my mom tried to talk to me about you. My _mom_ figured it out before I did. And Haymitch!” Katniss growled. “I asked Haymitch if you were okay and he didn’t tell me anything.”

“I didn’t want him to.” Peeta sighs. “I guess we’re even.”

Katniss shakes her head, stiff and angry.

“You don’t have to do it,” Peeta says. He stretches his leg. “Snow only needs one of us, and I’m it.”

“And that’s supposed to make it better?”

Peeta shrugs. “It does for me.”

  


Haymitch is right. All the mentoring in the world wouldn’t have mattered.

Vick and Aidy barely escape the bloodbath. Vick dies quickly, killed by the landscape. Aidy lasts five days. She allies with a man from District Eleven and dies helping him lead the careers into a trap. A girl from Ten wins, six days later.

Peeta doesn’t get see how she does it.

As soon as Aidy’s heart stops, Peeta has an assignment. The drugs are in the food, and Peeta doesn’t bother pacing himself.

“You might want to get rid of the lipstick,” his escort says, on the ride back to Tribute Tower. 

Peeta looks down and snorts, doing up his pants. He doesn’t remember how _that_ happened. “It’s not like she’s going to see it.”

His escort raises her eyebrows. She looks back at her little tablet. “You’re booked for the rest of the week; one a day.”

Outside, people snap pictures of the car, though they can’t possibly know who’s in it. They strain their eyes, hoping to see through the tinted glass, hoping for the glimpse of the powerful person inside. Most of these streets are for pedestrians and bicycles.

“What’s your name?” Peeta asks.

“Circe Proctor.”

Peeta gives her a polite smile. “Miss Proctor, is there any way you could get me a drink?”

**Author's Note:**

> For the h/c bingo prompt: “drugged”. Remind me to never write Peeta-pov again. I’ve been working on this a ridiculously long time and it feels like very little to show for it.


End file.
